The Salt House

by Lisa Duffy

  He was looking at me, waiting for me to answer.

  “He’s my father. There’s not much to say.”

  “He’s good with me fixing the boat, right?” he asked. “I felt kind of funny being in the yard, working on it, you know, without having met him.”

  “It’s my boat. It’s not like I needed to get his permission.”

  And he has no idea you’re fixing it was what went through my head.

  The boat had been sitting with a hole in it for three years. I was betting that my father wouldn’t notice it was fixed for another three years.

  “I know. But I should’ve checked with him just the same. What if he had shown up here when I was working on it? ‘Boy, eighteen, has his face rearranged after found trespassing.’ ” He said this in a voice of a news reporter.

  “You’re still hung up on that? I told you, Boon was kidding. He’s harmless.”

  “He might be. But your father isn’t. He’s got kind of a reputation.”

  I screwed up my face at him. “As what?”

  Alex look surprised. “As, um, intense. You do know that I work with half the boys in your grade.”

  “You work with five of them. And one of them is my best friend’s brother. So he’s getting it secondhand. Not because I dated any of them. Dating isn’t exactly allowed in my house.”

  Alex looked like he wanted to say something. But then he looked away, picked at the fibers on the back of the couch, looked back at me. He pushed the brim of his hat up, pulled it down. I knew what that meant.

  “What?” I asked, perplexed.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but my mother sort of lit into me about us. I guess your mom didn’t know we were hanging out. You know, having lunch.”

  “Was she mad at you?” I asked. “That you didn’t tell her about me?”

  “No. But it’s not like she keeps tabs on who I hang out with. She was mad because, well, you’re younger than me and she thought your mother was upset, and she was embarrassed that I didn’t introduce myself.”

  “She’s fine,” I lied. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Well, still. She’s right. I should’ve gone down to the docks and introduced myself to your dad. I mean, you are only sixteen. And I’m in his house right now. With his daughter.”

  “First of all, I’m seventeen in a couple of weeks. And second, don’t say anything to him. I’ll tell him. He’s got this weird thing about me and boys. If he finds out about us, that we’ve been together, it’ll just be a million questions.”

  Alex was quiet, then, and when I looked at him, he was staring at me, his mouth open. The words ran back through my head. That we’ve been together. My face flamed.

  “I don’t mean together as in we’ve been together. Like that,” I said quickly, breezily. But repeating it just made it worse. Alex didn’t smile, and I swallowed.

  The words were out there, and the picture of us together was in my head. Even though I hadn’t meant it like that, I couldn’t erase the image.

  I was aware suddenly of how close we were sitting next to each other. He barely had any clothes on. Board shorts, no shirt. I kept my eyes on my lap. I knew if I looked at his body, lean and muscular and tanned, and that scar on his knee, the one I dreamed about tracing with my fingertip, my face would give me away.

  His hand touched my shoulder, his fingertips grazing the skin on the side of my neck. I looked at him, and those green eyes were looking straight into me. Neither of us moved. I stopped breathing. I didn’t look away from his gaze. Underneath me, the couch dipped and Alex leaned forward.

  My whole body tingled. I felt his breath on my cheek, then his lips on mine. My hand reached out, and I ran it down the front of his chest, and he shivered, his lips pressing harder against my own. When our tongues slid against each other, he shifted and pulled me closer.

  The way he touched me told me he’d been thinking about it as much as me. He pulled my legs over his lap, our bodies pressing against each other, his hand running up my leg, under the back of my shirt, his thumb grazing the side of my breast. I’d thought of this moment so many times in the last month. But in my mind, I didn’t feel the softness of his lips, the stubble on his jawline, the heat of his skin under my hands.

  Now I didn’t want him to stop. My hand found the back of his neck. My fingers running down his bare back. He made a noise and pulled away, his hand gently holding my face, his fingers in my hair, keeping me still. He was breathing hard, his skin on fire.

  “Jesus,” I heard him whisper, his head down. He breathed out. I leaned forward, tried to kiss him again, but he pulled back.

  “No, Jess. Stop,” he said. “I’ve got to stop.”

  I didn’t move. He pressed his forehead against my own, let out another breath. I ran my fingertips down the smooth skin on his back, and he shifted, tightening.

  When he picked his head up, he looked bewildered, frightened almost.

  “I didn’t know you wanted this,” he whispered.

  I leaned in to kiss him again, but he stopped me. Then he stood up and walked over to the other side of the room and leaned against the wall. As far away from me as he could get without leaving the room.

  I stared at him, stunned. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “It’s just—” He paused, avoiding my eyes, his gaze on the floor. “I don’t know. You’re only sixteen.”

  “Almost seventeen.” I smiled. “We’re a year apart. It’s not like you’re Mr. Maturity over there,” I joked, but he pressed his lips together in a grimace.

  I felt the smile leave my face. “I’m just saying a year difference is not a lot.”

  “It’s not. . . . That’s not what I meant.”

  “Well, what do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting this. I guess I thought, well . . . you’re you.”

  I crumpled my face. “Huh?”

  He sighed, shifted from foot to foot. He looked uncomfortable, pained. “I mean with your father, you know, with the whole no-dating thing. You haven’t dated a lot of guys. Anyone, from what it sounds like. So I just got it in my head that we were friends. That we were just friends. Nothing more.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, trying to understand. “We started as friends. But we can move past that. I mean, it was just a kiss.”

  He snorted. “That wasn’t just a kiss, Jess,” he said quietly.

  I folded my arms across my chest, covering the side of my breast his hand had just touched, feeling my face grow hot. Now I stood up, moved to the doorway, trying to sort out what he was saying. I heard him say it again in my mind. You’re only sixteen. You haven’t dated a lot of guys. My face burned.

  “So would it make a difference if I had dated a bunch of guys?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said, pressing his fingers in his eyes.

  “What, then? Afraid you’ll have complaints?” It slipped out before I could stop it, but I was frustrated, angry now, that he thought my dating history, or lack thereof, was any of his business.

  He cocked his head at me. “Yeah, Jess. You could tell by my reaction I had complaints,” he said sarcastically. “Look. I’m trying to do the right thing here, and you’re making it impossible.”

  My jaw dropped. “I’m making it impossible? If I remember correctly, it was you who leaned over and kissed me.”

  “I know I did!” he shouted. “I told myself that we were just friends. That being here alone with you was nothing. And then you said that, about us being together, and the way you looked at me, I just kind of lost it and kissed you. I just wasn’t expecting you to kiss me back. And it changes things, Jess. Believe me, it does. And now you’re telling me you want this, and my head is about to explode. And I can’t kiss you right now. Okay? I can’t kiss you.”

  I felt rejected. Like a silly girl with a crush. The way I’d looked at him. Like he hadn’t looked at me the same way.

  Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe it was all in my mind.

 
I’d lit a candle, put on perfume, spent hours thinking about tracing that slug-shaped scar on his knee, dreaming of touching him, kissing him. And all along he was thinking of me as a friend. That being here alone with me was nothing.

  I walked over to the candle, picked it up, and blew it out. He was standing in front of me, the only light in the room from the moon above.

  “Well, let’s be just friends again,” I said quietly. “Then you won’t have to worry about kissing me anymore.”

  He dropped his head back against the wall, closed his eyes.

  I waited for him to tell me that’s not what he wanted. That he wanted to kiss me. That he wanted to run his hands all over me. But he didn’t say a word.

  I grabbed the bag and went into the kitchen to make sure everything was back in its place. I put the glasses in the cabinet. The candle back on the table.

  Alex came out after a minute. I took his keys from the table, held them out to him, and he took them without a word, his face invisible under the brim of his hat.

  We were silent on the ride home.

  Alex looked at the road ahead with a vacant stare. There was a lump in my throat, and my whole body was tight. I tried not to look at his hand on the steering wheel, the muscles on his forearm. I tried not to think about the way his tongue felt on mine.

  But it was impossible. In my mind, I replayed all of it.

  The words he’d said at the house didn’t match up with the way I’d caught him looking at me when he thought I wasn’t watching. The words didn’t sync with the way he’d touched me on the couch, with the look in his eye when he kissed me. None of it made any sense.

  And it hadn’t been just today either. I’d felt something between us for weeks. And it hadn’t just been one-sided.

  Now something occurred to me, and I turned to face him.

  “What did you mean by this changing things between us?” I asked, the sound of my voice suddenly loud as it pushed past the lump in my throat.

  “What?” Alex looked over at me and then back at the road. I saw the veins on his hand pulse, his grip tightening on the steering wheel.

  I eyed him, my stomach suddenly turning over as the thought in my head became clearer, remembering the phone call from a girl named Amy that he’d ignored, the awkward silence after he’d put the phone in the glove compartment.

  Now I cleared my throat. “At the house, you said what happened between us changes things. Believe me, it does, is what you said.”

  Alex sighed, rolled down the window as far as it would go, and leaned away from me, as though he wanted to jump out of the truck.

  “Can we not talk about it, Jess?” His voice was soft, pleading, but I was back on that couch, seeing the look on his face when he leaned into me. There was no mistaking how he felt about me. I was sure of it. And then he’d walked across the room and made some lame excuse about my age, my inexperience.

  My insides boiled, the heat on my cheeks returning.

  “Did you say that about someone specific or is it just your advanced maturity talking?” The thought tumbling out of my mouth. The words came out angry, and he flinched, but I couldn’t pull back from it now.

  We were in front of my house now, and he pulled the truck over to the curb.

  Alex looked out the window at the house. “Someone’s home, right?”

  The streetlight lit up one side of his face, and I saw him fiddle with his hat. Push, pull.

  “You’re not going to answer me?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t sure there was a question in there,” he said, finally looking at me.

  “You know everything about me—that I haven’t had any boyfriends, and I’m not allowed to date—but we never talk about you. Then we start kissing and you stop and say you can’t kiss me anymore and give me a bunch of reasons that make zero sense and I guess what I’m asking is did you stop kissing me because of another girl?” I blurted out in one breath.

  Alex took off his hat and tossed it on the dashboard, leaned over, and pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, a grunt of frustration coming out of him. When he sat up, he glanced over at me, but he didn’t look me in the eye.

  “It’s not like that, Jess.”

  “That’s not an answer,” I said.

  “It’s complicated. Okay? It’s not a yes-or-no thing.”

  The inside of the truck was suddenly cold. I swallowed, pulled my bag up between us on the seat. My voice was caught in my throat, a sob lurking somewhere behind it.

  “It kind of is, Alex. Did you stop kissing me because of another girl? Yes, or no?”

  He didn’t answer, and in the dim light, I saw the look on his face. Sometimes his face was a city storefront, alive and full of light, and then suddenly closed for the day. A metal security gate rolled down and locked into place.

  This was Alex now. Closed and locked up.

  I opened the door and got out, pushing it closed behind me. I turned and walked up the stairs. I felt his eyes on me, felt them with each step I took.

  The house was empty, but I went straight to my room and shut the door. My bag was filled with the trash from our sandwiches, but I dropped it in the corner and plopped on my bed, not caring that I still had sand on my feet from walking barefoot on the driveway at the Salt House.

  After we’d kissed, I’d left the Salt House without slipping on my flip-flops, ignoring the sharp stabs on the soles of my feet from the crushed shells on the driveway. I’d walked to Alex’s truck as fast as I could, thinking Alex was far behind me. Maybe even waiting for me to come back in.

  But Alex had been right next to me. Right on my heels. He pulled out of the driveway quickly. Anxious, it seemed, to leave the house.

  But no. That’s wasn’t it.

  Now, lying in my bed with my eyes closed, it occurred to me that Alex hadn’t been anxious to get away from the house. That wasn’t it at all.

  He’d been anxious to get away from me.

   17

  Jack

  Hope didn’t budge when I kissed her on the forehead. I’d hoped this morning would be like yesterday, maybe a smile, a kiss, something that would send me off with her touch on me. Yesterday, I’d leaned over to kiss her good-bye, and she turned her head so my kiss landed on her lips instead of the cheek I’d been aiming for. She’d put her hand on the side of my neck, her fingers tickling the hair on the back of my head.

  She’d slipped her shirt over her head, and I’d sat down on the bed to take off my boots, but she’d tugged at the back of my shirt, whispered to just get in. I’d slipped in next to her, fully dressed, boots and all. It was the first time we’d been together since the night we’d fought. Not that I hadn’t tried. At night in bed, it was as if a cold front was trapped under the sheets with us. I didn’t move after we finished, just wrapped my arms around her. I was an hour late getting on the water, but I was in that bed all day in my head.

  Last night she’d been quiet again, though, distant and preoccupied. This was how we were now. All or nothing.

  The rain came down all afternoon, swirling in gusts and then petering off to a drizzle. Once, the sun thought about coming out, but then the wind picked up and the rain came in sheets. Not that it mattered. Once you were wet, it was all the same. I didn’t feel it after a while. The fever that seemed to come and go was back again. I went through the motions, keeping warm, hot almost, even though my shirt was soaked through.

  The sun was low in the sky when I pulled up to the float. Manny was getting the crates ready to be hoisted up to the warehouse. He was bent over, and when he glanced up at me, he straightened and put his hands on his hips.

  “You’re as red as these bugs get when you cook ’em,” he said, pointing to the lobsters in the crate.

  “Fighting a cold,” I said, climbing off the boat. A cough went through me, and it was a minute before I got it under control.

  He was saying something about how I should get that checked out when I waved him off, walked up the stairs, a heaviness in my l
egs.

  Inside the warehouse, I went in the bathroom and rummaged through the drawer until I found the pill bottle I was looking for. The pain in my back was getting worse, and I was burning up, even though I was soaked through. I shook one of the pills out of the bottle into my palm and swallowed it, the chalky taste coating my mouth. I didn’t know if it would help—the date on the bottle said they’d expired last year—but I was desperate. There was a towel hanging on the back of the door, and I rubbed my head and face with it before I went back outside.

  Manny was gone when I got back to the float. Up above, I heard a door shut and saw him on the side stairs to the old room that he now used as an office. He walked to where I was standing and held out a glass jar filled with a reddish-brown liquid.

  “Drink it,” he said. “It’s tea with a somethin’ special in it. A family recipe.”

  I took a sniff. It smelled like cherries and something I couldn’t place.

  I held it back out to him. “What’s next? You going to tuck me in?”

  He took the jar, leaned over, and put it on the deck of the boat. “Trust me. Make you sleep like a baby.”

  I climbed on the boat, slipped the jar into the cup holder next to the wheel, thinking I’d toss it out later.

  “Maybe,” Manny said, untying the line and throwing it over the rail, “you won’t be such a battyhole if you get some sleep.”

  I flipped him off, and he blew me a kiss as I throttled forward. I left him standing on the float, the water churning up behind me.

  Calm Cove was just around the bend. I was at the wharf when the sky opened up, the rain pelting the boat as I tied her off. I took the jar out of the cup holder and went below to wait it out. I stepped out of my Grundens and pulled my shirt off, the flannel so wet that when I draped it over the faucet, a puddle formed below it and trickled down the drain.